wakaranai
by Java Trinomial
Summary: One woman's struggle to understand. Reviews appreciated - flames used to toast marshmellows.
1. wasabi to anrui

wakaranai  
  
They say that we must hate the sin, and love the sinner, but how can you do both?  
How can you love someone while hating an essential part of them?  
How can you love someone but think their love is a sin?  
True romantic love is holy even to me - and the act of love is a part of that.  
And this they do not choose.  
So how can you damn them for what they are?  
  
  
They say Women are to be answerable to Men, and that they should "submit gracefully?"  
Why shouldn't Men submit to Women? Is that so hard to comprehend?  
So she should submit to bad leadership? To physical abuse?  
Women and Men are two parts of a whole, yin and yang.  
And both are dominant, and both are submissive.  
So how can you curse Her for being strong and proud of herself?  
  
  
He says "Love thy neighbor as yourself" and then they say "you're going to hell."  
Love means respect.  
Respect doesn't include threatening people for not believing in one specific God.  
That person may still love all creation, and work for the glory of everything.  
They may worship Love, and True Beauty, and Peace amongst All Nations.  
They may be ever preserverent, ever working to better all humanity in deed and will.  
And yet you damn them to hell for not saying "Jesus is my Savior."  
  
  
I really don't get it.  
  
Jesus would have wanted to be proud of us.  
If he still lives, he'd be weeping tears of regret.  
For what They and You and We have done in his name.  
Shall I count it out for you?  
  
Murder  
Rape  
Theft  
Assault  
False Accusation  
  
and  
  
Unforgiving  
Unmerciful  
Hypocritical  
Hubric  
HATE!  
  
  
You say you aren't one of those that went on the Crusades? That burned the witches? That killed the Jews? That loved money over mercy and greed over justice?   
  
You say you are a Christian?  
  
  
Matthew 23: 29 "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. 30 And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' 31 So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!   
  
  
And if you are a Christian, forgive me for telling what I see as the truth. If I hurt you, I am sorry. If I question what you see as The Truth and that is sin, I am sorry. There is my penitence, take it as you will.  
  
But if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, listen. And if you have a brain to think with, use it.  
  
In Truth's name, Amen. 


	2. gizen

wakaranai  
  
So they say they want to convert people?  
To show the greatness of Christ, the Truth and the Way?  
How about converting the Christians who murdered Matthew?  
Or perhaps the Christians who caused the Vietnam War and the slaughter therewith.  
And the Christians who authorized the bombing of Hiroshima.  
Maybe the Christians that murder the 'abortionists.'  
And the Christians that send people death threats.  
Sometimes they say they aren't "real" Christians - then convert them!  
Make them into real Christians!  
When I see that happening, then try to convert us.  
When I see that happening, I might even convert.  
But I doubt it'll happen.  
  
Matthew 7:3-4  
  
"Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? "Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye?   
  
  
And it's funny.  
I know it's heresy to everything, but I respect Adolf Hitler.  
And Theodore Herzl.  
And Osama Bin Laden.  
And Jesus.  
And George W. Bush (well...grudgingly. (j/k. I can afford to have a little lame joke in here...))  
And Mohammed.  
And even the Christians that murdered Matthew, caused the Vietnam War, authorized Hiroshima, murdered the 'abortionists' and send people death threats.  
And Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Emperor Meiji, Megumi Hayashibara, and pretty much anyone living or who has lived.  
I respect that they are human beings.  
I respect that they have, as such, human dignity.  
And I respect that they, and whomever they have affected in their lifes, are entitled as human, as 'ramen,' to life, the right to live in a dignified way without fear, the right of acceptance (or at least tolerance), the right to pursue happiness where it does not hurt others's rights, and the right to be free where there is no reason that they should not live free.  
  
That does mean, of course, that Hitler and Bin Laden deserve a life sentance without parole. They killed people. Thus, they have a reason not to live free.  
But still, I have human respect for them.  
I am concerned for their welfare.  
I don't always love them, but I do respect them.  
And by that definition, I think respect counts better that love as They say it.  
In the end, I wonder which Jesus would have been more impressed with?  
True Respect, or False "Love"?  
Hmm?  
  
I guess I am slightly hypocritical here, even. It's hard for me to respect those intolerant of tolerance.  
But I try.  
  
Yet I still don't get it.  
  
~~~~~  
  
They say, you know,  
If you don't know Him  
You go to hell  
and burn in fire forever.  
  
And yet I see  
those who don't know Him  
through no fault of their own  
and thus they're going to hell?  
  
I'm sorry, my friends.  
That's bullshit.  
Do you really believe  
in a God like that?!  
  
If there is a God  
and he's like that  
I'll never worship him  
even on my deathbed.  
  
If he sends all his saints  
or his only begotten son  
If he shakes my hand himself  
I'll refuse to believe.  
  
I'll go to hell  
and burn in fire forever  
with the innocent children  
unbaptized, uncleansed  
  
I'd rather be tormented  
for all eternity  
than smile in a Heaven  
with an uncaring God.  
  
I'll make a stand.  
  
So one last time,  
What love is greater?  
Crying for the lost in Heaven,  
or joining them in Hell?  
  
((This last point is for Glowing Embers. Tookamiemitame.)) 


	3. oushi

wakaranai  
  
  
I opened my heart to God a long time ago.  
And he didn't listen.  
  
~~~~~  
  
I opened my heart to them all.  
I prayed to Jesus madly, every moment,  
I spent days speaking to God in wonder.  
I accepted the Holy Spirit into myself.  
My rosary broke from so much use.  
Since I was a child, I loved them so much  
I thought they would always be there.  
  
Then he left me.  
  
I asked him to relieve my cup.  
Or, if not, to strengthen me to endure it.  
And he left me then.  
When I most needed him.  
  
I looked into the Bible to ask what I did wrong.  
I searched through friends, the Sisters, the Internet, everything.  
There was no strength anywhere.  
I was drowning in pain, every day.  
  
I believed through the screaming.  
And the cold looks of "dissapointment"  
And my Cinderella labor  
And through the beating  
And the begging, "God help me in any way you can!"  
  
I took communion.  
I took confession.  
I purified my thoughts and deeds.  
And yet, it continued.  
And I could not survive it.  
  
To my parents, I was useless  
unless I gave them fame and pride  
but I could not be perfect  
so they did not love me.  
  
You cannot know how long it lasted,  
unless you have felt it as well.  
And then you know of what I speak of.  
  
I did everything I could  
It was the eternal question:  
Why can't Jesus help me somehow?  
In thought? In deed? In belief?  
WHY DON'T YOU HEAR ME, YOU BASTARD?!?!  
  
I left my home  
on a Greyhound bus  
looking back so often.  
I ran away.  
  
My sisters and brothers  
are still there  
and I cannot help them.  
  
I went to another school  
a Catholic school again  
where the girls were snakes  
and monsters wrapped  
in pious belief.  
  
I asked for God back again.  
I prayed and worshipped  
My rosary frayed.  
And no word from my Lord  
or my beloved Jesus.  
  
Just anything...  
A word.  
"I chose you to test your faith."  
or  
"You did it. Good job."  
or even  
"I love you, my child."  
  
I love you so much, Jesus.  
Why don't you help me  
in this, let me understand  
or at least free me from understanding  
and let me believe...  
  
~~~~~  
  
Nothing.  
  
He wasn't there  
when I was tortured  
when I was eaten alive  
when I had no escape  
when I had escaped  
I believed all this time  
is His Glory  
and His Beloved son.  
And the question finally came:  
  
How can you not hear me?  
  
And then the answer:  
  
Because He is Not There.  
  
~~~~~  
  
You speak of unending unconditional love from God.  
You call that love?!  
  
You speak of the God of the Impossible.  
I survived the impossible.  
God helped me not.  
I am stronger than your God.  
  
You speak of a God loving without respecting.  
I respect and love.  
God respected me not.  
I am greater than your God.  
  
His Son Jesus Christ died for my sins?  
I would have taken his cross from him.  
But all he did is turn his head from me.  
Jesus died not for my sins.  
  
My mother lies and poisons her children.  
My stepfather steals the rings off of my dead Nana's fingers.  
By God's law, I am their kin.  
so by God's law, he shall punish me for the sins of my forefathers.  
  
Exodus 34:7 Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.  
  
~~~~~  
  
Do you think I didn't do enough?  
  
How DARE you!  
  
I loved Him!  
I praised Him!  
I would have taken His Cross for Him!  
I would have Died For Him!  
I would have Lived For Him!  
  
And he disowned me.  
  
~~~~~  
  
So stop it with the bullshit.  
God doesn't love us all.  
I know it's so hateful to your ideas  
but f---it, it's not true.  
God doesn't love me.  
And don't even try to say he does.  
You. Are. Wrong.  
I rarely try to say it, but there you go.  
If You Think God Loves Me,  
Well, he doesn't love me enough.  
  
~~~~~  
  
"Maybe there's a God above  
And all I ever learned from Love  
was how to draw at someone who outdrew you  
It's not a cry you can hear at night  
It's not somebody who's seen the Light  
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah  
  
Hallelujah, hallelujah  
Hallelujah, hallelujah...  
  
Hallelujah, Hallelujah  
Hallelujah, Hallelujah."  
  
Rufus Wainwright, "Hallelujah"  
  
~~~~~  
  
I lived through Job.  
And I found a Truth.  
But unlike Job  
I refuse to believe in God  
just because he's a god.  
Might maketh not Right.  
I wont take for an answer,   
"Because I said so."  
You call it the Word of God.  
I call it bullshit.  
  
Can't you see  
the forest for the tree?  
If God forbids us slaughter  
what right hath he  
to do what he forbids us?  
How can he break his own law?  
How do we know  
that your God  
isn't just a playful Q  
that's screwing with our heads?  
Or a truly malicious entity  
that uses you, knowing  
how humanity is frail  
giving you laws to hate the sin and love the sinner  
when it knows we cannot  
and thus it makes us kill Matthew  
and destroy people's lives  
just because they're biologically made  
to want to take the same sex?  
How many people have died because of Christianity!  
What if that's the point?  
What if God gave us those rules knowing we'd twist them  
and rejoices in each innocent dead?  
what if that's the rule of the universe?  
  
~~~~~  
  
So I live.  
And I take each second.  
But sometimes...  
I remember.  
And that's what hurts.  
The lies and betrayal.  
So think, occasionally,  
when you speak of Almighty God.  
There may be someone who knows better  
right next to you.  
  
~~~~~  
  
Author's Note: Iesu Domina, it's a gray sky rainy day and I'm playing "Hallelujah" over and over again. Give me a whisper in a review, won't you? 


	4. ouzuru

Well.  
  
I see my words have become a beacon of light  
since we all now find ourselves here.  
And like the first fire people curled around  
we fight each other to get close,  
to harm or to hurt  
  
I will speak of those who comment on me  
without names  
but to see who says what, look at the reviews.  
You can find them easily enough.  
  
~~~~~  
  
First, though, and foremost: Why do you know God exists?  
When? Where? Who? Which?  
Suppose I am born into an instant  
this instant, supreme of all  
Suppose I am the Fool.  
Why believe in a God I have never experienced?  
Then,  
see me as I am.  
I have read the bible.  
What makes it the only truth?  
You keep saying those things  
"The Bible is the ONLY truth"  
"Jesus is the ONLY savior"  
and I wonder,  
how do you prove these things?  
Whose word do you have?  
Why should I believe the Bible?  
Why not the Koran?  
Or Torah?  
Or the Tibetan Book of the Dead?  
Or the Sutras?  
Why that one book?  
  
I know, I know.  
"There are more things on heaven and earth  
than are dreampt of in your philosophy."  
And yet.  
Why should I make myself believe in God?  
He's done me no help here.  
  
He's done no one I know here help.  
Not my beloved Amanda, who hurts  
and yet stays with her parents  
even though I can see the pain in her.  
Not me, whose story you know  
if you had read the last chapter.  
  
He tells you to love.  
Where's the love?  
Who has come to me, to help  
to put a hand apon my shoulder  
and offer a tissue  
and reason out what I can do  
to escape and win over my pain?  
In a whole Catholic school, not one.  
In a whole Christian school, not one,  
but an atheist.  
  
I'm bi.  
  
I've loved one girl, but she was straight.  
I've had mad crushes on two.  
I care about these people though.  
And my being in such a way does not hurt myself  
because I accepted it.  
  
But I can see people hurting  
because of people saying that Gay = Bad  
and that Homosexuality = Sin  
and they, worst case, curse and torment them  
and at best, pray for them self-righteously  
and not give one helping hand.  
  
People say that homosexuals are unhappy?  
Well, there's one of two explanations I see.  
Homosexuality makes them unhappy  
or the unacceptance of "loving" people  
who do their damndest to destroy them  
and make them not fit.  
  
I wonder, I wonder.  
Do you know what I wonder?  
  
But I wonder why people ignore this idea.  
Someone speak on it!  
What if God isn't all-loving  
or all-knowing  
or all-powerful.  
Because he can't be.  
  
You guys can try to bend the definition of love  
however you want.  
But God does not love me  
like a mother would.  
He loves me  
like my mother does.  
And my mother loves me  
like a homophobe loves a queer.  
  
I'm half-queer.  
Did I mention it already?  
Maybe I should say it again.  
  
You can't heal people  
that aren't sick.  
  
And I wonder,  
why the girl was so shocked  
when I compared Hitler to Jesus.  
I wonder  
why she didn't.  
  
Hitler was human.  
Jesus was human.  
That's the only comparison I made.  
  
My, what self-righteousness we have here!  
God Forbid I should question  
Jesus's holiness by "comparing" him to Hitler!  
  
Doesn't anyone remember the practical silence  
in the Protestant church in Germany?  
The Catholics spoke out after a while.  
I wonder why there was little to no responce on their side.  
  
How many of you  
would risk your life  
to help a Jew?  
  
Wouldn't that be what Jesus would do?  
  
I think Jesus would have been gassed had he lived then.  
  
~~~~~  
  
So it's the Christian's fault  
that innocent children die  
without having heard about Jesus?  
  
Nice to know.  
You still say they will burn in hellfire.  
And I'll be right there roasting alongside them.  
By choice.  
  
~~~~~  
  
"Dear God,  
  
I don't know if you noticed but  
your name is in a lot of quotes in this book.  
Those crazy humans wrote it - you should take a look.  
And all the people that you made in Your Image  
still believin' that junk is true.  
Well, I know it ain't, so do you."  
  
Dear God  
  
~~~~~  
  
If you are a Christian  
and you do not speak out,  
If you are a Christian,  
and you do not work against  
the evils that still exist in our society  
because of that which Christian's do --  
  
then you decorate the prophet's tombs  
while profaning them  
with the words "I would not have done so."  
  
Silence implies consent.  
  
But of course,  
If you are a Christian  
and you do Christ's work  
feeding the sick  
clothing the naked  
just doing unto others  
as you would have them do unto you  
and giving out caring thoughts and acts  
as best you can   
(and I count a lot for trying)  
  
then you are a Christian  
who can build the prophet's tombs  
without hypocrisy.  
  
~~~~~  
  
I never pushed God away  
but he left.  
I had to help myself.  
  
I loved God.  
And he still isn't there.  
  
~~~~~  
  
And I still don't get it. 


	5. wakaru

So, God helped me.  
  
Uh-huh.  
Suuuuuure.  
You really are brainwashed, aren't you?  
  
You can't comprehend  
can't understand  
and worse  
don't want to  
don't care to  
even THINK  
about it.  
  
So here's a riddle, if you please  
See the forest in the trees  
God gives us pain so extreme  
of which few people could even dream  
and when you think of running away  
to hide in death, never see the day  
damnation for dying by your own hand  
misery for staying in the living's land  
what kind of choice? forbidden death's tryst  
God's catch-22 is a perfect twist  
to his lies to us, the moral mist.  
  
~~~~~  
  
I see miracles everyday.  
Miracles of humanity.  
Love without want  
joy without selfishness  
pleasure without fear.  
  
I saw a tear once  
and it held half of humanity.  
But then I saw a child's smile  
and I realized  
Humanity trancends mathematics.  
  
~~~~~  
  
I loved Judith.  
She's so strong.  
And most of all,  
she stood up to a tyrant.  
Stood up to a warmaker.  
And for one life, she saved her people's.  
  
And then, curiously,  
I loved Jezebel.  
Not for everything she did,  
but for her overarching love  
for her husband  
and for her pride.  
Because I can see  
a little bit of Jezebel in myself.  
The pride  
the temper  
the maniputations  
and the courage.  
  
I love being.  
  
~~~~~  
  
And you know what, I think I am starting to understand.  
Thank you, my friends.  
I'll explain soon. 


End file.
